“Almost took it?” Michael asked. “Why didn’t you take it? You were safe?”
“Not really. The problem was that Gunther disappeared. I went to the Coliseum, but he was gone. A week went by and no Gunther. I thought the worst, and that is what brought me to the bishop. I was scared.”
“Really? A scared Nazi SS officer? Come now.” Michael laughed.
Stern paused for a moment, then said, “I successfully made it to a private ratline created by the bishop himself and used only for his special customers. The velvet bag I gave him was more than he expected.”
“The bishop? Did he also hate Jews?”
A smirk crossed Stern’s lips. “Oh, absolutely. He was pro-Nazi and a man of religion…both. His weakness was diamonds. He derived great pleasure from pouring them from one hand to the other to watch them sparkle.
“He was famous for writing a book when he lived in Austria, which showed his support for Hitler. His book made it clear that he hated Jews and provided his reason. He told me the Nazis were not guilty of anything, and they were treated as scapegoats by an evil system. The bishop thought of the Nazis as anti-communists and because of that he felt the National Socialist Party deserved his support. This bishop was no different from me and other Nazis. We believed that what we did was right for our country and the world. We wanted to stop communism, just like America.” Stern paused. “When the Nazis heard of his book, they flocked to him for help.”
“And the bishop, the ‘altruist’ that he was, did what he thought was right for him? I mean, helping the Nazis did make him rich.”
“That’s true, it did, but he earned every lire,” Stern replied. “He arranged for forged Italian passports for us, and soon we were on a ship bound for Argentina, a country that has always been receptive to the Axis powers and a place where my forged passport would be accepted. It is important for you to know that the Nazi escape operation involved many countries. Juan Domingo Peron, himself, created a plan to bring high ranking Nazis to fascist Argentina, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. You may not know it, Michael, but Peron was as fascist as they come.”
“I always knew it. So, it was Peron who initiated the plan and created the network of ratlines?”
“Not just Peron. It was a group conspiracy, which included the Swiss government, a few bishops in the Vatican, Croatian priests, and the Argentine Catholic church. South America became a Nazi paradise!”
Michael shook his head. “I’m not sure I believe that. The truth, Hans, remember? The truth. How did Switzerland become involved? I always thought of them as neutral.”
“Michael, I know you are a learned man, but perhaps there are things beyond your understanding. The Swiss are neutral only militarily. You would have to be crazy to invade Switzerland with all those mountains and every Swiss man a trained soldier with guns in his house. But they were business people, and they made money on secret bank accounts and on commissions for storing wealth. Switzerland became a sanctuary for Nazi gold and art.”
“I didn’t know everything was so well thought out. Leave it to the Nazis, the cowards. When they had to escape, they figured out a plan so that they could run like rats...ratlines, how apropos. What happened after you got into Argentina?”
“Someone had to help me further. I needed a place to live and some sort of job so I could keep my sanity. Another friend introduced me to Fernando, who grew up in Buenos Aires. He was smart, spoke Spanish, English, and German, and his specialty was lining up assassins for people who needed his services. He arranged the right man for the right job. Fernando was able to do anything for a price. Always a high price, but he delivered first-class work.”
Stern stopped, his eyes darting about. He took a deep breath, his hands trembling as if the mere mention of Fernando’s name put him in a state of panic.
“Go on,” Michael said, waiting.
“Okay, he found us an apartment and got me a job fixing Fiats and other European cars in a small repair shop on a quiet street in Buenos Aires, not far from Garibaldi Street, where Eichmann lived and where I would be unnoticed. I had to work. I did not want to live my life in the shadows, looking at the world from an inconspicuous window on a side street. I felt safe in fascist Argentina. It was a country similar to Germany. The soldiers even did the goose step, but I had to keep busy or I couldn’t live,” Stern said proudly. “Fixing cars helped me keep my sanity.”
“Come on, stop bullshitting me. You have no sanity. You’re here, in America. I don’t get it. You had a place to live and a good job. You could have stayed put, like most of the other Nazis who ran to Argentina with the other scared rats. They were happy to be free and safe. Don’t bullshit me, Hans. Why didn’t you stay in Argentina where you knew you were safe? There has to be another reason. Let’s have the truth,” Michael said, stabbing his finger at him.
Stern took a deep breath.
“Yes, I would be safe if it weren’t for Fernando. After a while, he thought I was holding out on him and asked for more money and diamonds. He, basically, did not like me. He sneered when he talked to me in spite of the enormous amount of gems I placed in his hands. I couldn’t stay in Argentina, Michael, not with Fernando constantly breathing down my neck for more diamonds. I knew, in the end, one of his assassins would kill me. I would have to hide out like an animal unless I gave him everything I owned.
“I don’t know why he hated me. I was not a Jew. I was a well-known, high ranking SS officer, and I paid him with enough cash and diamonds for him to live a luxurious life. If I gave him everything, I would be living on the street and I could not let that happen. He was a crazy man who didn’t care about other people, the bastard.” Stern’s handcuffs rattled as he pulled on them. “I had to stop him or I would be dead.”
Michael looked at Stern. His red, swollen eyes and cracked lips had taken a toll on him. He kept breathing rapidly in short breaths with anger contorting his pale face. Then he hung his head and was silent. He appeared to be worn out. Michael turned away when he heard the trickling sound of Stern peeing in his pants while he held his only free hand in front of his eyes to avoid the penetrating glare of the lights.
Michael didn’t give him a chance to rest. He liked it when Stern rambled on. He was weak enough to tell the truth
“Skip to the end game. You know, like the end game in chess,” Michael said. “Obviously, you weren’t interested in dying. How did you get Fernando off your back?”
“It wasn’t easy. I phoned him and told him I had an original artwork. It was a Van Gogh called Painter on the Way to Tarascon. I told him it was worth a fortune and I would give it to him if he left us alone. He agreed and said that if I gave him such a precious artwork, he would never bother me again.”
“I hope you went along with that. Your life was worth more than a painting. How did you know he would keep his end of the deal? You only had his word.”
“I already knew his word meant nothing. He was a liar and I had to stop him in the only way I knew how. I arranged to meet him the next day at the Alvear Palace Hotel, a short distance from Buenos Aires, where I booked a luxurious room for a week. I placed the colorful painting against a small table facing the door.
“When Fernando entered, his eyes widened and they were all over the Van Gogh. It was as if he saw nothing else. He went closer to get a better look. He examined it, fingering the brush strokes, and as he was looking at it, I snuck up behind him. I had to do what I had done to so many others before him, but my hand trembled as I held my silenced luger to the back of his head. I fired twice, then a third time until he fell to the floor. His blood splattered all over the Van Gogh and onto the plush white carpet. I put my jacket over my bloodied shirt, hung a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the doorknob, and left.”
“And the painting with the blood? Did you take it?”
“No, it was only a copy worth a few Argentine pesos.”
“So, it was over between you and Fernando?” Michael said with an inner smile, knowing that Stern
would not see the humor. Michael was surprised by his answer.
“Not quite,” Stern said, shaking his head. “Not nearly. I knew that after Fernando’s body was found, his friends would come looking for me. But even before I conceived the idea of killing him, I had already planned to get out of Argentina and into Paraguay, which also provided a safe haven for Nazi officers. Hilda, the girls, and me were ready to leave until a friend approached me and said that five Americans were killed in Buenos Aires for their passports. Four of the passports were brand new, with not one stamp on them. They were worth a fortune. I was amazed that the man gave them to me as a gift and thanked me for connecting him to the bishop when I was in Rome. I had the passports altered and now had another new identity. I used them to come to America and we settled in Oneonta.”
Michael stared in disbelief as his mind raced.
There was no way he could get into the States that easily. There were no ratlines to America.
“Is that the truth, Hans? That last part about how you got to the States sounded kind of shaky.”
Stern looked down at his knees and closed his eyes.
There must have been a lot of money passed and a few dead bodies along the way for Stern to get here. I’ll let it rest. For now.
Chapter 16
The next morning, Michael woke up exhausted. Stern had revealed some truths about what it was like to be a Nazi officer, but he never expressed the way he felt about having the power to kill so many people.
There was no remorse for sure. Jews were vermin to him. Did he feel nothing?
Stern was a vicious killing machine, specializing in killing Jews, but now Michael had a taste for blood...Stern’s blood. When Stern killed Jews, it was part of his day’s entertainment, and he was all business in his role as an executioner. Now the power had shifted. There was a new Jew in his life, his executioner.
Michael prepared a cheese sandwich for Stern and returned to his courtroom in the garage.
Stern had his eyes shut. He was still partially covering them with his right hand, always protecting them from the bright lights.
His eyes fluttered open and Michael enjoyed watching him wake up and squirm in his own soggy feces. Michael held his nose and backed away. The real trial had not yet begun.
Stern said nothing, but Michael observed that the handcuffs kept his left shoulder pressed too firmly against the pipe, preventing him from slumping over when he slept. It was important to protect Stern’s wrist from leaving handcuff marks. Michael carefully went behind him to pull the handcuff over his shirt sleeve.
Stern was awake but appeared pale and sad. Dark circles framed his eyes. Strands of greasy hair hung to his nose, red and runny from the overnight chill. His unshaven face showed a reddish-blond beard after only four days in captivity. He had little opportunity for movement, but having his right hand free fulfilled a few of his needs. The air inside the garage reeked of a mixture of old urine and something burning. That, combined with Stern’s repulsive body odor, made it unbearable.
The smell was too much for Michael, but he felt it was worse for Stern because he had to endure it twenty-four hours a day. One thing Michael did give him was copious amounts of water. Stern was grateful for it, but he had to pay a price. Fresh urine constantly soaked Stern’s pants and flowed onto the garage floor. Michael opened the rear door of the garage to let in some fresh air.
“I have told you so much,” Stern said. “And you have said nothing about yourself.” There was a challenge in his eyes.
“We will get to that when I feel the time is right,” Michael said, acting indifferent.
Michael kept up his incessant questioning.
I must know how a Nazi officer thinks. Wear him down. Make him wait like he made the Jews wait, standing body against body on the train to Auschwitz. In the heat of the dark cattle cars, with no food or water, the clickety-clack sounds of the wheels on the tracks pounded into the ears of the doomed passengers.
Forced to step in each other’s excrement, they endured the smell of sweat, urine, and feces that permeated the air they tried to breathe. Covering their mouths and noses didn’t help. Sometimes they would hold their noses to get a few seconds of relief but only have to pay for it a moment later with deeper breaths.
The Jews didn’t know what would come next. Many died in puddles of their excrement.
Stern had to sit in his.
“One thing is bothering me, Hans. What happened to Hoess? He was the commandant. Did he slip through the cracks?”
“No, he never got away, but he tried. I actually know the truth about him told to me by a reliable friend. He got the hell out of Auschwitz as the Red Army approached in 1945 and went into hiding. He was tracked down by a German Jew and eventually fell into the hands of the Polish authorities, who hanged him outside the entrance to the gas chamber. Then my friend told me something interesting that was previously unknown to me.” Stern paused.
Michael leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
“Before he went to the gallows, Hoess revealed that he had been ashamed of being weak-kneed when he pushed hundreds of children into the gas chambers, until Eichmann explained to him that it was important to kill the Jewish children first so they would never be allowed to reach adulthood and take revenge in the name of their parents.”
“I’m sure there are some children still seeking vengeance for their parent’s murderers, even today in 1970.”
“For them, if they were seeking revenge it would be necessary to do it outside the law, or they could be punished. The law is not always forgiving.”
Michael put his head down and whispered to himself, but Stern heard him. “Killing the children first to prevent future vengeance? That’s unthinkable.” Michael sobbed, and added, “Hoess felt weak-kneed and was ashamed of feeling that way? The bastard! What shame did he feel about gassing children in the gas chambers and stuffing them in the crematoria?”
Hoess was another monster who should have never been born.
Michael took a deep breath. “And Himmler, what happened to him?”
“Himmler, the head of the SS Police, disguised himself in a sergeant’s uniform and wore a patch over one eye, but it was his own comrades who turned him in to the British. He found a way to commit suicide to avoid standing trial.”
“How do you know all these details? Not everything was in the newspapers. I didn’t know about the patch. Are you not telling me everything about yourself?”
“I learned these things from other Nazis who liked to talk. We only had each other and talked only about the war, years after we escaped and were free. It made us bond together. We had no other friends. I don’t know, maybe some of the information were rumors. Please let me clean myself up. There is no need for me to sit in my crap. Please,” Stern begged.
***
Michael pondered the insanity of the Nazis and their hunger for killing. He imagined the ones who escaped to Argentina, sitting together around a table, drinking German beer, laughing and talking about the old days when they murdered millions of people.
For Hitler, it was not just about power. It was revenge he was after. He had to get even for how bitterly Germany was treated after World War I. They were blamed for the war and had to pay reparations to the victors, which would have taken Germany two hundred years to pay off.
“It was the end of the war,” Stern had said. “It was an armistice, which meant the countries should’ve just stopped fighting. Germany should never have had to pay reparations. Hitler was never able to forget the humiliation that German people had to feel. He would get even for them.”
Those were Stern’s words.
He always had a reason to side with Hitler. How did he become this angry, evil man? Who created this animal? Was it in his genes? He craved power and maybe learned his evil ways from the corrupt thinking of the National Socialist Party. It was easy for him to become part of the nefarious scheme to destroy Jews and so-called other undesirables, then create the superior Aryan
race and conquer the world. That was him, all right. Stern fit in.
Michael believed most of the German people supported Hitler. He didn’t seize power. He was elected to it. They cheered him on as he created a new Germany full of hate and anger. Mass insanity was everywhere.
Michael was convinced that the German people knew what was going on, but closed their eyes to it. They ignored the sound of marching boots and loud banging on the doors of their neighbors who mysteriously disappeared into the night. Didn’t they question where their neighbors went? Or did they know and wanted to be part of the new Germany ruled by a madman?
In the late thirties, the German people understood that no German was allowed to purchase anything from Jewish businesses, and Jews were excluded from certain professions and could no longer attend a university. They had to be separated from Aryan life. The Nazis found the Jews, rounded them up, and sent them to concentration camps. The German people followed those rules and most never questioned them. Michael wanted to know more.
“Hans, how the hell did the Germans figure out who was Jewish?”
“The truth is that most of the Jews made no secret of their identity. I could never understand why. I would have run.”
“Yeah, I could see you doing that. I want to hear more.”
“We also depended on informers. People had to prove they were not Jewish by showing church affiliation and baptism certificates. This may surprise you, but even your country’s IBM was complicit in helping the Nazis commit systematic genocide of the Jews by allowing them to use their punch card system to find them.”
“The Nazis may have had good methods to find Jews, but I don’t think an American company like IBM would be involved with the Nazis,” Michael said with authority.
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